Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/453

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HERSILIA.
HESIODUS.
439

the following were the most celebrated : Andreas, Apollonius Mus, Aristoxenus, Baccheius, Callia- nax, Callimachus, Demetrius, Dioscorides Phacas, Gaius or Caius (Gael. Aurel. De Morb. Acut. iii. 14), Heracleides, Mantias, Speusippus, Zeno, and Zeuxis, several of whom wrote accounts of the sect and its opinions.

A further account of Herophilus may be found in Haller's Bihlioih. Anatom., and Bihlioth. Medic. Pract. ; Le Clerc's and Sprengel's Histories of Medicine ; Dr. Marx's dissertation mentioned above, and a review of it (by the writer of the present article) in te British and Foreign Medical Bevietv, vol. XV., from which two last works the preceding account has been abridged. [W. A. G.]

HERO′PHILUS, a veterinary surgeon at Rome in the first century b. c, is said by Valerius Maxi- mus (ix. 15. 1) to have passed himself oif as the grandson of C. Marius, and thus to have raised him- self to some degree of consequence. [W. A. G.]

HERO′STRATUS {'HpoarpaTos), a merchant of Naucratis in Egypt, who, in one of his voyages, bought at Paphos a little image of Aphrodite. (01. 23, B.C. 688 — 685.) On his return to Naucratis a storm ensued, which was stilled by the goddess, who regarded Naucratis with especial favour, and who, as a sign of her presence with Herostratus and his crew, caused myrtles to spring forth all around her. Herostratus, when safely landed, gave an entertainment to his friends, to celebrate his deliverance, and presented each of his guests with a myrtle crown : hence such a chaplet was called arecpavos Nau/cpariTTjs. (Polycharm. ap. Athen. xv. pp. 675, f. 676, a, b ; Casaub. ad loc. ; comp. Herod, ii. 135.) [E. K]

HERO′STRATUS ('Hpoo-TpaTos), an Ephesian, set fire to the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, which had been begun by Chkrsiphron, and completed by Demetrius and Paeonius, It was burnt on the same night that Alexander the Great was born, B. c. 356, whereupon it was remarked by Hegesias the Magnesian, that the conflagration was not to be wondered at, since the goddess was absent from Ephesus, and attending on the delivery of Olympias: an observation, says Plutarch, frigid enough to have put out the fire. The stroke of genius in question, however, is ascribed by Cicero, whose taste it does not seem to have shocked, to Timaeus of Tauromenium. Herostratus was put to the torture for his deed, and confessed that he had fired the temple to immortalise himself. The Ephesians passed a decree condemning his name to oblivion ; but Theopompus embalmed him in bis history, like a fly in amber. (Strab. xiv. p. 640 ; Plut. AUx. 3 ; Cic. De Nat Deor. ii. ^7 ; Val. Max. viii. 14. Ext. 5; Gell. ii. 6.) [E. E.]

HERSE CEptrrj). 1. The wife of Panaus and mother of Hippodice and Adiante. (Apollod. u. 1. §5.)

. A daughter of Cecrops and sister of Agraulos, Pandrosos, and Erysichthon. She was the beloved of Hermes, and the' mother of Cephalus. (Paus. i. 2 § 5 ; Apollod. iii. 14. ^2, &c. ; Ov. Met "-724.) Respecting her storr, see Agraulos. At Athens sacrifices were offered to her, and the maide^s^who carried the vessels containing the libation (epo-r?) were called lpp7]^6poi. (Paus. i. 27. § 4 ; Hesych. and Moeris, s. v.) [L. S.]

HERSI′LIA, the wife of Romulus, according to Livy (i. 11) and Plutarch {Romul. 14) but, ac- cording to Dionysiua (iL 45, iii. 1), Macrobius [Sat. i. 6), and one of the accounts in Plutarch (/. c), of Hostus Hostilius, or Hostus, grandfather of Tullus Hostilius, fourth king of Rome. Those who made Hersilia wife of Romulus, gave her a son Aollius or Avillius, and a daughter Prima (Zeno- dotus of Troezene, ap. Plut. Romul. 14) ; those who assigned her to Hostus, called her son Hostus Hostilius. [Hostilius Hostus,] Hersilia was the only married woman carried off by the Romans in the rape of the Sabine maidens, and that un- wittingly, or because she voluntarily followed the fortunes of Prima her daughter. In all versions of her story, Hersilia acts as mediator — in Livy [1. c.) with Romulus, for the people of Antemnae — in Dionysius and Plutarch {ib. 19), between the Romans and Sabines, in the war arising from the rape of the women. Her name is probably a later and a Greek addition to the original story of Ro- mulus. As Romulus after death became Quirinus, so those writers who made Hersilia his wife raised her to the dignity of a goddess, Hora or Horta, in either case, probably, with reference to boundaries of time ("flpa) or space {opos). (Gell. xiii. 22 ; Ennius, Ann. i.; Nonius, s. v. Hora ; Augustin. de Civ. Dei. y. Q.) [W. B. D.]

HERTHA (contains probably the same elements as the words earth, erde), the goddess of the earth, in contrast to the god of the regions of the air, among the ancient Germans. She appears either as a female Hertha, that is, as the wife of Thor, or as a male being Herthus or Nerthus, and a friend of Thor. According to Tacitus (Germ. 40) there was a sacred grove in an island of the ocean, containing a chariot, which no one but a priest was allowed to touch. This priest alone also knew when the goddess was present, and such seasons were spent in great festivities, and people abstained from war, until the priest declared that the goddess wished to withdraw. Tacitus further calls her the mother of the gods. We cannot enter here into an examination of this great German divinity, but refer the reader to Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie; J. P. Anchersen, Vallis Herthae deae et Origines Danicae, &c.; Hafniae, 1747, 4to.; Rabus, Dissertatio de dea Hertha, Augsburg, 1842. [L. S.]

HESI′GONUS. [Hegesigonus.]

HE′SIODUS (Ἡσίοδος), one of the earliest Greek poets, respecting whose personal history we possess little more authentic information than respecting that of Homer, together with whom he is frequently mentioned by the ancients. The names of these two poets, in fact, form as it were the two poles of the early epic poetry of the Greeks; and as Homer represents the poetry, or school of poetry, belonging chiefly to Ionia in Asia Minor, so Hesiod is the representative of a school of bards, which was developed somewhat later at the foot of Mount Helicon in Boeotia, and spread over Phocis and Euboea. The only points of resemblance between the two poets, or their respective schools, consist in their forms of versification and their dialect, but in all other respects they move in totally distinct spheres; for the Homeric takes for its subjects the restless activity of the heroic age, while the Hesiodic turns its attention to the quiet pursuits of ordinary life, to the origin of the world, the gods and heroes. The latter thus gave to its productions an ethical and religious character; and this circumstance alone suggests an advance in the intellectual state of the ancient Greeks upon that which we have depicted in the Homeric poems, though we do not